When removing the meat of the poultry thigh from its bone, the usual procedure is to strip the meat from the bone by scraping with a tool along the length of the bone. For example, two or more blades having notches therein are moved into contact with the meat and the bone with the notches of the blades straddling the bone, and the bone is then pulled through the notched blades. This longitudinal movement of the bone with respect to the blades causes the blades to scrape the meat along the length of the bone and finally off the end of the bone. Usually, the meat remains in a single mass after the meat has been stripped from the bone. Examples of this stripping type of meat removal from a bone are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,672,000, 4,327,463 and 4,495,675.
One advantage of removing the bone from the meat of an edible fowl is that when the meat is later cooked, the bone does not have to be cooked, which saves energy. Further, if the bone is separated before the cooking process, the bone can be conveniently saved and used as bone meal, etc.
A problem with some of the prior art poultry deboning equipment is that the blades that engage the bone and strip the meat from the bone sometime inadvertently cause bone fragments to be carried away from the bone in the meat.
Another problem with some of the prior art automated deboning equipment has been that the equipment must be manually loaded by placing the poultry thighs in the equipment and permitting the equipment to perform its deboning function while the worker waits for the deboning cycle to be completed. The hand/eye coordination of the worker must be timed with the operation of the equipment so that the worker does not have the flexibility to work slightly faster or slower during each cycle of operation of equipment.